Homebuyer tax credit may explain surge in lending to less affluent

I was scanning two recent studies of the U.S. housing market that focused on what some might call "vulnerable communities" or "vulnerable population groups," and at first I wasn't discerning any real surprises, but after closer scrutiny I came to realize one of the two reports had some real eye-opening statistics. The first study I looked at was produced by the Center for Responsible Lending and is called "Lost Ground, 2011: Disparities in Mortgage Lending and Foreclosures"; the second was done by New York University's Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy, and was titled, "Mortgage Lending in Vulnerable Communities: A closer look at HMDA (Home Mortgage Disclosure Act) 2009." The second study may seem dated, but it actually came out in 2011 and was using the most recent data, which happened to be from 2009. Before I discuss the section of the one study that caught my eye, I'm going to first review the key points of the two, wh...